This is a difficult term. As I was reminded today, calquing happens in many ways. It is easy to say that ‘tadva means “to guess”. but this of course does not express the entire meaning of this term. I guess I should be a bit more specific: Have you noticed the ‘guess’ in the last sentence? This is a term which cannot expressed with ‘tadva (Rejistanian would express the entire sentence quite differently: Hite’tan’xe mi’lanja’tinhu (literally: My specificness is probably advantageous) ). On the other hand, rejistanis to use ‘tadva to express solving riddles, even those which cannot be solved by luck.

It is quite hard not to calque terms by just translating one word in English or German as one rejistanian word and it takes quite a bit of… remaining in the… mental state of rejistanian to prevent that. I have found that it is quite helpful to have a word of the day blog to illustrate the exact meaning of every word (Sylvia Sotomayor manages of capture the essence of the Kēlen words quite eloquently and probably does this better than I can). ;) What do you do to capture the exact meaning of a term?

(Mikoangelo) You should write an article on RWotD about colloquialisms and stuff
(Mikoangelo) so I can learn how to say stuff like “no way!” and “for realz‽”

Rejistanian used to be not a very colloquial language. People turned to their native languages if they wanted to speak colloquially among each other. However, the various migrations changed this to a point and colloquial rejistanian emerges. It is mostly defined by a different way of speaking. I explained colloquial rejistanian grammar already a bit. Generally, the noun-classes won’t be marked and neither will be the tenses. Various things won’t be used unless there is a very good reason to, like the various subjunctives (except oki for emphasis) and the passive voice. Forms with ‘aru will be replaced by state-verb constructions when possible (and where not quite possible but you see yourself able to escape the grammar police ;) ).

Colloquialisms which exist are mostly metynymies and inside jokes. As such, a given community might call their school “Sede[ha]” because it is the “Exkola’het Hank~hila Sede” or “axiri[‘het]” (beach) after that one first day of school where they all dressed up (or rather down) in swimming clothes as a practical joke. Not all are though: In the example of the schoolday, the term ‘derek (which means old and in bad shape) is also used for ‘boring’.

That said: There were specific sentences, which were asked for: “For realz‽” would be “Tye su‽” (real/actual QUESTPART). “No way!” would either be something like “Mi’aru’ta!” (literally: it does not exist!) or a bit idiomatically: “Xatri[‘tan] nil ry’ra!” (literally: zero times in 100). The etymology of this expression is not quite clear to me as of yet. It probably is related to incorrect understanding how percentages work linguistically.

An interesting search reached my blog as well: Someone metacrawled* for “kenlentine’ny mje’he”. This is actually the name for the council, which is in charge of Rejistania. Kenlentine’he’ny means “joint representatives” and the “mje” which means “one” or here “first” takes the noun class suffix from the noun in the ordinal form. Thus “kenlentine’ny mje’he” means “The first joint-representatives”.

* “to google” sounds odd in the past tense…

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I really do not want to see the Rejistanian Word of the Day being considered not safe for work. And since I found out that there are very quick ways to get fired (and that my significant other and me even once got someone fired by something he said and I posted to QDB), I will just say that this is what people do when they love each other very much to encourage the stork to come. The word is on a rather high end of formality. More like ‘having intercourse’ than like any four-letter words.

I declare this SFW because I read a joke relating to an incident like that in a book of jokes which was not especially marked as explicit material.

And on a completely unrelated topic: I tried to explain to someone recently why Esperanto is so easy and again used the example of ‘Unabsteigbarkeit’ to illustrate how Esperanto often uses affixes to create new words. However since the person was USAmerican, I translated the example as ‘unrelegatability’. This did not translate well. He did not get it and only later I realized that top leagues in the USA do not have a relegation/promotion system. So here is a question to my readers, especially those who are American. Can you give me a good example I can use which can completely be understood even without having seen it before by looking at the stem and its affixes?

BTW: Even though Esperanto was an influence for rejistanian, it has less ways to use affixes to change meanings. For example ‘place for’ has to be said as its own word. Unabsteigbarkeit however can still be one word even in Rejistanian: ehasalan’ta’tan. And now I wonder how a language like Toki Pona could express that? ;) I should not bash Toki Pona too much, but I do think that its simplicity is deceptive. It lacks the mechanisms to create words like Unabsteigbarkeit and instead has to form very intransparent constructions. I think the Toki Pona speakers traded one form of complexity for another one and while that might be a useful tradeoff to them, it looks disadventageous to me.

It is a rather straightforward term with predictable derivations*. However, the word, I was asked for is a bit more difficult: schadenfreude. This is not as easy. The concept can be called in different ways: isin’tan xuka itva’tan for example (happiness about failure) or isin’tan xuka tore’het (happiness about pain) or isin’tan xuka ivyk’tan (happiness about shame/embarrasment). A way to express the sentiment in rejistanian would be something like isin’tan xuka nuvan’tan’mi luru’he (Happiness about the unhappiness of another person).

Whether it is due to the weather or just because nothing in infinite. At one point, plants will wither and die. The force of nature, which is responsible for this is, at least according to the majority religion of Rejistania, Jaortirkansa. Jaortirkansa is not only the divine embodiment/God of death, but also of reincarnation. As such, the deity is more like Shiva based on my limited exposure to Hinduism than like a devil or Greek god of death. Even though I did not know of the song at the time I created Inikresaism, the filk song Eternal Flame (by Julia Ecklar and Bob Kanefsky) has a very fitting line:

Now, God must know all these languages,
and a few I haven’t named.
But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
that its flesh will be reclaimed.

Of course, it is about the wrong deity, but I think about this lyrics whenever I think of Jaortirkansa.

Jaortirkansa is one of the two main deities of inikresaism. The other being Relekhakansa, the God of life and growth. The name Inikresa meant something, but while Inik’tan means ‘order’, I am not sure what resa was.

Another requested word of the day, this one for the most wonderful person in my life, who captures my thoughts night and day and with whom I want to live until the end of my days. My fiance. He wanted to know how the position of a forward in soccer is called. It of course is hetaki’he and the most famous hetaki’he’ny are Syku Lyku, nicknamed “SyLy” and, errr, Syku Lyku, nicknamed SyMji*. Of course, the name Syku Lyku is rather popular in Rejistania especially since SyLy became a national hero in NationStates** world cup 11 and 12. Even the abbreviated form turned into a name and one of the people named like that, Syly Kansu, even made it into the national team later, ironically as defender. That SyMji is supposed to be related to the words Syku Lyku sounds not believable, but it is. Ly just happens to be the word for three and Mji the word for four***.

* There is also Jenji Y, but his story is a bit more complex for Out-Of-Character and In-Character reasons and more silly.

** when I found the game NationStates, I signed up to give the Rejistania in my mind a home in the real world. And this made roleplayed history of Rejistania also affect the mental ideal I have of the place.

*** I know that the pun is stupid, but then, the world cup is the time for the press to make stupid puns. “Klose encounters”, “You ain’t Ghana win this”, “England Mullered”, etc…

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I mentioned already during the article about alte, that I would ontroduce the term ‘milhan later. It is simply something like a structured way to play. It is not quite like the ruleless ‘kimara. ‘milhan is used for sports, board games, also children’s games like catch. Games which are less structured (the pretending games of children for example) are less likely to be used with ‘milhan, but it can happen.

Milhan’het means game or match. Please be aware that this refers to one instance of a particular type of game. So Rejistanian would say milhan’het for, say Germany vs Argentina*, but milhan’tan for a type of game. As in the sentence: I don’t like the game Monopoly.

BTW: Someone asked me about how to rejistanize “Schwalbe” (or diving). It is a hard term to rejistanize especially when words like ‘hakela were not introduced yet and I would feel better to do so when I have more time, less tiredness and not my parents around me**. For now, let’s say that the expression for diving in soccer would be ‘hakela ‘okox.

Example: Il’lanja’kaska ‘milhan milhan’het kyus jynel su? (2S-SUBJ1-prefer (INF)play game war nuclear QUESTPART? Do you want to play a game of thermonuclear war?)

* Let’s just say that the Germans surprised me. I seriously expected overtime and maybe PKs like in 2006.
** I am back in Germany at my parents again. Expect my English to decline rapidly ;)

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If the rejistanis invented the soccer, the word xkora’het would not be required. Instead itva’het’ny (malus points, see yesterday’s posting, derived from the word ‘itva: to fail) or lehiju’het’ny (same thing, but derived from the word ‘lehiju: to concede) would be assigned to the team scored against. However since it was not, the idea of positive points came into the -tani and the word score was loaned into xkora’het. It generally means any positive point in sports, a goal in soccer, hockey or handball, a point in basketball, etc. ‘xkora is the verb for ‘to score’. Oh, and get your mind out of the gutter, not in that idiomatic meaning*!

The requested word however was ‘ghost goal’ and apparently, this word has two meanings, either a goal which should count but does not or a goal which should not count but does. In both cases it can be described by general paraphrasings like “merdisde’het” (misdecision), “merxkora’het” (mis-goal), “minjialari’he mi’la’ena oasua’het’mi” (the referee needed his dog), “minjialari’he mi’jeduni ji mi’vyei” (the referee is drunk/high and hallucinates!), “ada’he mi’ma’ta ‘mesu!” (the linesman is blind) (BTW: adding the curse slani can be used to add empahsis to the expression). But a bit more specific terms do exist. A goal, which the speaker thinks was granted even though it never should have been (Wembley!) is a “xkora’het aru’veri” literally: an existenceless goal. In the other case, when a clear goal was not granted (very unlike in Bloemfontein where the ball didn’t cross the line), it is a “xkora’het vuraknil” a denied goal.

I have used and mentioned this word in various examples already. This word has actually two meanings. If is it used with a color, an object or a situation, it means dark. For example: seli xala is a dark turquoise. If it is used referring to a person, or with the ‘he suffix, it means dark-skinned or a, well, black*. Xala’het means ‘something dark’ and xala’tan means darkness.

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I am not sure how this word got into the language. I guess after falling down to create lines, my brain worked weirdly. I think it was not designed as a loan but as a word, which just coincided. Its derivations are depressingly regular.

Since this word is not really interesting, here some unrelated things, which I do have to put somewhere. One relates to the format of the audio. I realized that I potentially excluded listeners by my choice of format. So I will give you the choice: which audioformat do you want? Ogg Vorbis is free, libre, and open, it creates small files and is easiest for me to use since audacity supports it directly. It might however not work on your Windows unless you have a 3rd party player like vlc. MP3 is probably still in patent struggles, it is widely supported and would require me to type one command more than I would need otherwise. Speex is an interesting, free, little codec ideal for speech*. It seems neat because it creates smaller files, and since I am currently hosted by a friend, I feel bad about the filesizes. I know that it works on Linux but I have no idea which other OSes support it. So yeah, xetsu’iln (choose)!

Now… how to translate instructor, or guru as Ysak asked… I had to coin a few words for that. I already suggested to him exkola’he (teacher) and xesyn’he (the literal translation would be ‘leader’, yes, the same word as Führer if we bothered to translate it, however it is not used in government related contexts. ). There also exists letva’he (instructor, someone who teaches, especially worldly and vocational skills) and ki’he (someone who knows) sevae’he (someone who is initiated into arcane, probably religious knowledge). None of these might have the connotation which was asked for, but it is a part of the fun of learning that the words mean very different things even when they translate he same concept.

*I am especially partial to it due to its slogan ‘A free codec for free speech’